


Tricky

by rainfall



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Romance, Threesome anyone?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-20
Updated: 2011-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-15 20:56:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainfall/pseuds/rainfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As well as Yuri liked to think he knew her, Judy had a knack for surprising him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tricky

"Will you keep the name?"

Yuri glanced over at her without moving. It was the first word she'd spoken in a while, since they'd settled down on the grass. The night sky overhead was dotted with stars, brightened mostly by a nearly-full moon, but though he could see her face clearly he still had trouble reading the expression there. She _looked_ casual and her question had _sounded_ careless, but you could never be sure with Judy.

As well as he liked to think he knew her, _he_ could still never be sure.

"Hmm?" he returned, eloquently.

If he admitted straight-out that he didn't understand, there were even odds that she'd explain -- or smile one of her mysterious smiles and then it would be as if the question had never existed. If he said nothing, she was almost sure to drop the subject. But Yuri had found that he could tip the scales in his favor with something like this: a nonverbal little nothing, almost asking but not quite.

Conversations, like so many other things, could be a game for her. If he played back, he'd found that conversations, like so many other things, could be fun for him, too.

Judy turned to gaze at him, her eyes moving slowly over his face, and then looked back up at the sky. She said, "Vesperia. It was named after a star, but now you know it isn't a star at all. Will you keep the name?"

Yuri propped himself up on an elbow. "I think that's more Captain Karol's department," he pointed out, bemused.

She raised her eyebrows ever so slightly, and stroked her fingers idly through the grass. "Hmmmmm," she said. "All right."

But the question still lingered in the air between them, and after a moment Yuri found himself stretching out to lie back down on the grass. "...It doesn't make any difference, to me," he told her.

"No?"

Still her voice was light, unconcerned.

"Nope." He rolled over, so that he was facing her, and watched her face closely as he went on: "We didn't really name ourselves after a star. We named ourselves after a hero. An ideal. Even if that ideal isn't all we _thought_ it was, that--"

And then he cut himself off.

She smiled; but then, she was almost always smiling, and he couldn't quite be sure it was aimed _at_ him. Except that of course he knew it _was_.

"...It's not the same thing," he told her, but even to his own ears he sounded sulky.

"What's not the same thing?" Judy asked, in her most innocent tone of voice.

He grabbed a handful of grass and tossed it irritably into the wind. "Alexei's not the man we thought he was, but that doesn't matter. The memorial is about what he stood for, what we all believed in, and Flynn especially. That's what you're trying to say, right?"

She gazed up at the stars, her tone thoughtful as she remarked, "I don't think I said anything like that..."

" _Really_. And I suppose you weren't _also_ trying to tell me that I should go."

Judy brought a hand up to her throat, fingers splaying over her collar bones in an extremely practiced gesture of surprise. "Do you think the Commandant would like that?" she asked, as if it had only just now occurred to her.

He tried to hold the scowl -- he really, genuinely did. But he felt it tremble and then he couldn't help the laughter. "You know? I think he just might. Damn, you're tricky."

"I don't know what you mean," Judy said, but her ruby eyes were dancing as she reached up to curl her fingers in the front of his shirt. "I only asked you a question."

That made him laugh, too, and he let her pull him down until their lips were almost touching, his breath unfurling warmly over her lips. "Like hell you did."

She lifted her eyebrows delicately, opening her mouth for more denial, but he silenced her with a long, firm kiss.

How long, he wondered, had she known? Was this the whole reason why she had brought him out here? Was his brooding over the stupid memorial really that obvious...?

And here he thought he knew _her_. Really, she was the one who knew him -- and maybe a little bit _too_ well.


End file.
